Bourget is fascinating to the Russian reader, like thunder after a drought, and it is easy to understand why. The reader of his novel saw that the characters and author were wiser than he, and observed a life richer than his own; whereas Russian fiction writers are stupider than the readers, their characters are pale and unimportant, the life of which they treat is barren and uninteresting. The Russian writer lives in a miserable hole, eats mold, is fond of low creatures and laundresses, doesn't know history, or geography, or the natural sciences, or the reli- gion of his own country, or administration, or navigation . . . in short, doesn't know beans. In comparison with Bourget he is a web-footed goose and that's all. One can understand why people should be fond of Bourget. . . .
. . . I am bored. . . .
I'll soon be sending you a letter in French and German. My compliments to Anna Ivanovna, Nastya and Borya.
Have a fine trip.
Yours,
A. Chekhov
To MIKHAIL GALKIN-VRASKI1
January 20, 1890, St. Petersburg
Dear Sir,
As I propose in the spring of the present year to take a trip to Eastern Siberia with scientific and literary aims in view, and as I desire among other things to visit the island of Sakhalin, both in its central and southern portions, I have made so bold as to request most humbly that Your Excellency lend any support in my behalf you may find possible toward the attainment of the aims I have mentioned above.
^ Chekhov took this letter to the office of the Main Prison Administration, of which Galkin-Vraski was the head. He explained to Galkin-Vraski, in great detail, the aims o[ his jonrney and asked permission to inspect prisons and industries. Galkin-Vraski was so agreeable and polite that Chekhov felt sure he would get the aid he needed. But Galkin-Vrnski did not help him and, after the Bolshevik government opened the Prison Administration's archives, it was found that he had given orders that Chekhov was not to be allowed to see certain categories of political prisoners and exiles.
With sincere respect and devotion, I have the honor to be the most humble servant of Your Excellency,
Anton Chekhov
To ALEXEI PLESHCHEYEV
February ij, 1890, Moscow
. . . You really didn't like the "Kreutzer Sonata"? I won't say it is a work of genius, or a work for all eternity, for I am no judge of these matters, but in my opinion, amongst the mass of things being written here and abroad, you will hardly find anything its equal in seriousness of conception and beauty of execution, not to mention its artistic merits, which in spots are astounding. You must thank the story for just the one point that it is extremely thought-provoking. As I read it I could hardly keep myself from exclaiming, "That's true!" or "That's ridiculous!" Of course it does have some very annoying defects. Besides those you enumerated, there is still another point that one won't readily forgive its author, to wit, Tolstoy's stubborn brashness in treating of things he doesn't know and doesn't understand. Thus, his pronouncements on syphilis, foundling homes, women's repugnance to cohabitation and so on are not only debatable but also show him to be an ignoramus who has never taken the trouble during the course of his long life to read two or three books written by specialists. Still, these defects fly like feathers before the wind; considering the story's great qualities you just do not notice them, or if you do, it is only to be peeved that the story did not avoid the fate of all works cre- ated by man, none of which are perfect or free from error.
So my Petersburg friends and acquaintances are all angry with me? Why? Because I didn't bore them much with my presence, which has been a bore to myself for so long! Calm their minds, tell them that I ate a lot of dinners and suppers there, but did not captivate a single lady, that every day I felt sure I would be leaving on that evening's express, but that I was detained by my friends and "The Marine Miscellany" which I had to leaЈ through in its entirety, going back to i8:J2. I did as much in one month in St. Pete as my young friends would not be able to do in a year. However, let them rave! . . .
Goodbye, dear fellow, please pay us a visit. Regards to your family. My sister and mother send their compliments.
A. Chekhov
Sakhalin was a half forgotten island off the Pacific coast of Siberia, used by the Czarist government as a colony for crim- inals and political prisoners. Chekhov decided in i8go to make a trip to Sakhalin. Up to that time he had shown no interest in penology, had not belonged to any organizations doing re- habilitation work or prison reform, had little interest in Siberia. The climate of the flat lands of Siberia in early spring was obviously too harsh for a man with tuberculosis, the trip was expensive and Chekhov didn't have much money, and the three months' journey from Moscow to Sakhalin had to be made under incredibly primitive and uncomfortable condition.1
Why did he go? He gave many answers to his bewildered and protesting friends. Sometimes he said he was worried about his work: "Sketches, stupidities, vaudevilles, 'A Tiresome Tale' . . . paper filled with writing, the Pushkin Prize2 • • • and all the time not a single line which has any serious literary importance in my own eyes." Sometimes he said he was worried about the staleness of his life in Moscow: "Even if I get nothing out of it all there are bound to be two or three days which I will re- member all my life with joy or grief."Sometimes he said he was going to Sakhalin to pay his debt to medicine, but some of his
Fifty years later, I made almost the same trip across Siberia. Even though I went in a good airplane and took only fourteen days, it was still rough going.
Chekhov had won the l'ushkin Prize but the judges had made the whole thing mingy by cutting the money award in half.
friends thought he was running away from a love affair that he was afraid of.
There is nothing in the Chekhov letters or notes or in the memoirs of his friends that truly explains the reasons for this daring journey. Perhaps it was undertaken simply out of pity for the people on Sakhalin and a humane desire to help them, but, on the other hand, the trip was made at a time when many intellectuals were accusing him of being a man without con- victions, without social ideals. Perhaps he felt—certainly he said it often enough in other places—that ideals are proved in action and not in fireplace chit-chat. \Vhatever the reasons, or mixture of reasons, he took off for Sakhalin in the spring of lSgo.
The letters about the journey speak for themselves. The trip proved to be a kind of catharsis for Chekhov. The misery of the people on Sakhalin put his own physical-social-literary problems in their proper place. He said, for example, that before he went to Sakhalin the publication of The Kreutzer Sonata was a tremendous event, but that after the trip the book made him laugh.
Chekhov's book, Sakhalin Island, is said to be an excellent ex- ample of a creative writer making use of research material. The book did have influence: it caused so much comment that a special government investigating committe was sent to Sakhalin. There is no record that the committee accomplished anvthing, and Chekhovs book was soon forgotten. But what he had seen on the island of Sakhalin was important to Chekhov for the rest of his life.